Jukai

With this jukai under my belt, I think I only have a few big events left on the ino's calendar for the year - Sejiki, Rohatsu, Buddha's Enlightenment and the New Year. I learnt again this weekend that most of the work is not in the ceremony itself but the preparation, and of course the cleaning up afterwards, some of which I still have to do before tomorrow morning. I had another pair of long days on Friday and yesterday; I think that even allowing for the fact that we had five preceptors and ten initiates, I wouldn't have been too stressed, except that Gretchen, my head chiden, was one of the people receiving a rakusu, and so couldn't help with vital parts of the set-up. As a result, between the end of the rehearsal after lunch, and the ceremony, a little more than an hour later, I was running around a lot, and getting more frazzled than usual. Luckily several people helped me out a great deal, notably Keith, Lucy and Joan, so I did get to calm down a little, and we did have everything in place by the time the densho started - and I still had time to pee and put on my okesa and bessu....
Everyone agreed that it was a beautiful ceremony; not that everyone knew exactly the moves they had to make, or what they had to do, but the spirit of the event was very warm and joyful. One perk of being ino is that I always get a good seat at these things, and I had the chance to take a few pictures during and after:

Blanche, Jordan and Lucy

Tom receiving his rakusu

Gretchen receiving her rakusu

Angela receiving her rakusu

Joe receiving his rakusu

Mayra and Joe

Bob

Jana and Benjamin

How did Lucy get so tall?

The whole group - preceptors and initiates